


Five Times Desire and Dream Agreed

by deskclutter



Category: The Sandman
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, Gen, Love/Hate, Siblings, dumb anthropomorphic personifications
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-22
Updated: 2010-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:52:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What it says on the tin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Desire and Dream Agreed

1) Something Delirium once said.

"'All the world's a stage'?" Desire murmurs. "Is that what you told him, big brother?

"Do you know, on a stage, where the maddest, wildest place is, sweet sibling of mine?" A smile flashes, sharp and sweet and full of promise. "Backstage."

Dream says, "And yet neither of us belong to Delirium."

"Most assuredly not," says Desire. "I belong to...me, myself, I. As for you..."

Dream walks away.

_His madness keeps him sane._

 

2) When someone walked away.

"How can we just let him go? _How can we just let him go_?" demands Desire, thrumming with anger, fear, hate.

"_So it was written,_" Destiny begins.

"Don't you fucking dare give me the damn spiel!" Desire screams.

"Desire, calm down," its older sister orders, leaping up. Despair huddles away, looking terrified, and Delirium holds her head to complain of a headache.

Desire screeches, and walks out with Despair, despite their sister's entreaties.

Only later is it plainly evident that Dream for once did not run to be at her side, and did not once berate Desire.

Big fucking deal, Desire thinks, sullenly scowling at his sigil.

 

3) On interference.

"Mess with me or mine again..." Dream had warned.

Indeed, Desire thinks, remembering a game played in America, over a man who thought himself an emperor, how they had not bested their older brother, though all three of the younger Endless had worked against him, but it was Despair who had extended the offer.

 

4) 1 Corinthians 13:6 - Love ~~does not delight in evil but~~ rejoices with the truth.

No, Dream finally accepts millenia later, Killalla had not loved him.

And the truth, Desire knows, as intimately as flesh on bone, hurts. Its twin's name is Despair, after all.

 

5) Once upon a time at the city that is no longer named:

"They fucking deserved it," Desire says, eyes fever-bright with some emotion, perhaps love or hate, or a perverse sense of justice. And no one says otherwise.

There is a funeral song for a city recorded within the Necropolis-wide memory of Litharge. It is the sound of falling towers, and the last breath of rivers that have from small trickles grown to the death. It is the rhythm of maddening as people who once laughed--in happiness, in fear, in derision--no longer shall, or ever will again. It is the quiet hum of the shifting desert where a city was crumbled into dust, and then the silence as the shifting stopped, and nothing there shall ever grow again.


End file.
